


Anne

by xpityx



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-24 14:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19725883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: Don’t leave me, she wanted to say, I needed this and I didn’t even know it. But she couldn’t find the words so she held her hand instead.





	Anne

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the bulk of this after watching Black Sails last year, then finished it off for [Rarepair Week 2019](https://urcadelimabean.tumblr.com/post/186097910860/urcadelimabean-the-second-black-sails-rarepair). It's unbeta'd and is very much a stream on consciousness fic. Thanks go to [urcadelimabean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/urcadelimabean/pseuds/urcadelimabean) for cheerleading.

She wasn’t a person before. That was how it felt anyways. 

First she was hunger: for food, for warmth, for a soft hand in her hair. She got rid of the last one: no-one to give it so it withered away. Then she was a flinch, a boneless weight, a quick lean to the left so she wouldn’t fall down the stairs when she was hit. She was darting eyes, always watching for how to avoid the worst of it. Sometimes she won, sometimes she lost. She was still hungry though, but even when she had food in her belly it gnawed at her: some need that could never be filled.

She didn’t notice the time she saw a man die, too afraid his killer was coming for her next, too afraid what would happen to her, now her husband was dead. Must have been her fault: everything else was. 

Later though, after the second time, the third. After she let the Captain teach her some skill with a sword, she knew what it was. 

It was the blood that filled her up, made her whole again. She stood on the deck of some ship, stinking of guts and shit and the dying crying beside her. She needed nothing more.

Jack was. Well, he was Jack. She never thought of him as a man, the way she thought of all the rest. Not after he spoke to her the first time anyway. Said she could come with him if she wanted. Like it was a choice, like she had one. She didn’t: she knew what happened to girls who killed their husbands. Didn’t matter that she didn’t do it. Jack though, he said she had a choice like he _believed_ it. Like it should be true. She’d never really thought of people as people before. Just, there were some that would hurt her for sport and there were some that wouldn’t hurt her as long as she did what she was told. That was all. Maybe there were others, but they didn’t affect her so they had no place in her mind. 

Jack was a person though: he never touched her once the first six months. She stopped flinching from him after a month or so. Felt stupid, flinching when he made sure to hand her a cup turned in such a way that meant their fingers didn’t even brush. He gave her a knife the first week, and then he slept next to her like she wouldn’t stab him. She didn’t, but he didn’t know she wasn’t going to. He hadn’t even asked. She would’ve.

_'You gunna stab me?'_ she’d have said, and then she’d have known by the way he tilted his head, by the way his hands twitched or not if he was lying. Didn’t matter what men _said_ : you had to watch them to know if they were going to hurt you or not. Sometimes even they didn’t know they were going to hurt you, they thought they were nice, thought they were reasonable, but Anne always knew. 

The Captain wanted to hurt people. He wanted to hurt people all the time, but he never did. Sure, he killed men who were asking for him to kill them, but he never hurt people just because he wanted to. She wondered at it. All these types of men she’d never known before. Wondered if there were more of them.

There weren’t, in the end. Most were the first type: the hurting one way or another type. A few were like the Captain, wanting to hurt but keeping it tightly coiled inside. None were like Jack though. She let him fuck her after six months. Figured he deserved it for waiting for so long. He made it good for her, and she was able to wait until he fell asleep before going and throwing up over the side. The Captain saw her, gave her a drink let her sit in the corner of his cabin and empty his jug of rum. He wanted to hurt Jack, she could feel it, but she looked him in the eye and shook her head. He nodded and they went back to drinking. 

“You don’t have to.” He said to her back a few days later. 

She thought about it. Thought about making it her choice maybe, like Jack had offered the first time. Maybe he didn’t know she hadn’t had one when she left with him, and maybe he didn’t know she hadn’t had one when they’d fucked. When he asked the next time, fumbling at the words, she said no. Just that: no, and nothing else. She had her knife gripped hard in her hand, telling herself over and over that the Captain had said she didn’t have to. Jack nodded, and went back to not touching her. 

Two years later, when they fucked again, it was because she asked him. She didn’t throw up that time, and Charles hadn’t been angry at Jack. 

“Some say that you should picture your enemies when you fight, that it makes it easier to kill another,” Charles said, sword loose in his hand. “But I think if _you_ pictured your enemies, you’d look around an hour later to discover you’d killed every man on the ship, crew or not, and I’d rather you didn’t, so.” 

He feinted left but she was quicker, mirroring his footwork, the hot sand barely an annoyance against her bare feet.

“Don’t think of them, don’t think of their faces or the way they held you down, think only of your rage.” 

Anyone else spoke to her like this, she’d have put her knife in their belly already, but Charles was talking like he was talking to himself, not to her, so she let him carry on. He parried her left and blocked her right. 

“Good. Don’t let the anger take your senses, just let enough through that it buries the fear.” 

One, two and a quick overhead slash and she had her left sword at his throat. He grinned at her, quick and fierce, and she felt her own lips twitch in response. 

She was good now, maybe one of the best. She killed three, four men at a time. Sometimes in a tavern she’d realise she was surrounded by men, big men, drunk men, and the old fear would come back. Jack had gotten good at reading her though, and he would sprout some shit until some dumb cunt threatened him, and then it was time for her to kill again. Sometimes no-one would take the bait: word got around fast about Anne Bonny and her double blades, so she and Jack would fuck instead. Jack liked it when she took control, and Anne liked it too. It had surprised her the first time he’d asked. So much that she’d laughed and he’d been pissed about it. But she’d said she was sorry, and they’d tried again. The only time she didn’t think his scraggly moustache was stupid was when she sat astride his face, rocking her hips against his mouth and tongue. 

Jack needed her, was the thing. Not like her fuck of her husband had needed her: he’d just needed someone to kick the shit out, someone who cried and didn’t fight. Jack needed _her_ though: Anne Bonny. He had wound himself around her like a vine, not tight, not choking, but like she was the only thing that kept him upright. It was a good feeling, she decided one night as she watched him sleep. She liked to fight, and she liked to keep her swords sharp, and she liked to be needed. She owed him her life and she knew it, but he didn’t seem to. He always acted like she had a choice being with him. Maybe she loved him for it, maybe she didn’t, but they fitted together. She couldn’t imagine life without him. 

  


Flint appeared in Nassau one day like something from one of Jack’s stories: clothes crusted with salt and blood, snarling at anyone who looked at him too long. 

He was the same as Charles, though they prowled around each other like two small dogs itching for a fight. Fucking idiots for not seeing it themselves. Even Jack didn’t see it. Flint had the same cast iron control, the same hollow place where something awful had scraped him raw inside. He didn’t see a woman when he looked at her either: not a hole to be fucked or a thing to be owned, he saw a person. She puzzled over it for a while, watching him out the corner of her eye in the tavern sometimes. She thought he had a woman in the interior maybe, someone who gave him smooth ribbons for his hair, but let him wear the same two shirts over and over. Maybe he needed his woman like Jack needed her. 

He wasn’t a threat to anything other than Charles’ pride though, so she let him live. Liked him even, from a distance. The men under his rule—and rule it was, even if they couldn’t see it—stopped bothering her so much. Stopped bothering the girls in the tavern so much too. Some men said he was soft, but that’s cause they were idiots. Took guts to tell a crew how to behave. 

The tavern was better, now she was used to it, now there were less men giving her shit. She even liked it sometimes. But she hated the whore house: all the perfume and tittering laughter. Made her curl her lip. Made her sick. Jack told her she was nothing like them, that she was stronger than those women who made their money on their backs. But that wasn’t right. 

She wanted to put a knife in every soft hand, a sword in every silk sash. In exchange she wanted them to give her their fearlessness, so she’d be able to stand among all these panting, savage men and not be afraid. She wanted to talk to them, to ask them what they used for rags when their cunts bled, how they laughed when men touched them instead of slitting their throats. She didn’t understand them at all, but for the first time she wanted to. She wanted to know more people than just Charles and Jack. She wanted to know these other women. But she couldn’t even look them in the eye, so she hated them instead so no-one would know she was afraid. 

He didn’t need her any more. Worse, she was replaceable, just another whore beneath him, beneath his fists. No, that wasn't right. Jack had never touched her like that. She’d done what she’d always done when she felt weak, but this time she didn’t feel better. 

There was blood on her face. It itched. 

He didn’t need her and the killing hadn’t helped. She’d thought maybe she could do the other thing now, the thing the whores were brave enough to do: let a man touch her and live, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t, and now the whore was dead too and she hadn’t meant to do that. It had just been too much, and too loud, and too close. She had stopped it all but now the blood on her face itched and Jack was still gone. How could he stand without Anne to lean on? To tell him he was running his mouth and he needed to shut the fuck up? Who was going to fight for him? Why hadn’t he fought harder for her?

She wasn’t thinking about what would come next. She didn’t need to. The rest of the Walrus crew would come for her. She could fight some of them, maybe most of them, but not Flint. Charles wasn’t here, maybe he wouldn’t have done anything away, after what she did. For all they understood her best, they’d still stood by while Max was raped. Maybe Jack couldn’t understand, but Charles knew what it was like to be held down, to be helpless. Didn’t matter no more anyhow. She’d be dead soon. Maybe then Jack would be sorry he left her behind. 

Her first time with Max, she’d felt safe. She’d never known she’d been afraid until she’d stopped. It was like the wind on deck: you never thought about it until it went silent. Max had put her fingers inside her, and they’d be no pain, no hidden flinch, no pause while Jack checked if she was OK, if she wanted to go on, Anne telling him to hurry the fuck up what was he talking about. Max hadn’t asked cause she hadn’t flinched. She hadn’t stopped cause Anne was right there with her, her hand on her wrist, pulling Max towards her, into herself.

She hadn’t known. Hadn’t known anything maybe. Not that it could be like this, not what women could do with each other. Max had held her after, and Anne had held onto her hand. Don’t leave me, she wanted to say, I needed this and I didn’t even know it. But she couldn’t find the words so she held her hand instead.

It hurt so much when Max betrayed her, like she’d swallowed glass. Jack asked her, _are you alright? Is there anything I can do?_ Like he couldn’t see she was all cut up inside, like he couldn’t see where she was bleeding from. That was worse somehow, that for the first time he had to ask where it hurt instead of just making her take off her shirt so he could bind her ribs or stitch her up. She couldn’t tell him either, it sounded so stupid inside her head: _I’m hurt on the inside, and it hurts so much worse than anything you could see._ How did you fix that? Charles would have understood, though the dumb shit wouldn’t have offered anything other than a swig from the rum he was drinking. She missed him and she missed Max, which made no sense as only one of them was dead. She didn’t even know if she was allowed to miss someone she could see, could hear and touch if she just stepped close enough. She was going to die anyway soon enough, in this goddamn stupid war. 

You couldn’t fix shit with words. Well, maybe Jack could, but she thought that mostly he just put so many of them together that they were almost an action: something physical that tripped people up. When Max said what she said though, for the first time in a long while she could taste something other than blood in her mouth.

It felt like when she swam to another ship: the deep blue nothingness pulled at some people, but never at her. She’d always been able to feel the bulk of the Ranger behind her, like a hand in her that swung ever home. Like Max’s hand, warm in her own.


End file.
